


Steam-Powered Teenagers

by The_Accidental_Book_Thief



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Steampunk, But this is an AU, F/M, M'gann is the mom friend, Not completely canon compliant, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Wally has a swearing problem, Wally lives, Wheeeee, romance is not the main focus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 15:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11512482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Accidental_Book_Thief/pseuds/The_Accidental_Book_Thief
Summary: The Young Justice steampunk AU no one asked for but you're all getting anyway.





	1. Chapter 1

    "What the blistered bleeding-" a stream of colourful expletives spewed from underneath the steam-bike, where an oil-covered ginger was in the middle of a desperate and failing attempt  to replace two of the cogs that turned the bike's rear axle.  
    "Language, Wally!" M'gann shouted from the kitchen, from which the smell of baking (and often burning) cookies seemed to perpetually waft into the garage.  
     "Yes, mom," Wally muttered as he crawled out from underneath the bike. He heard Connor chuckling from across the room. "Stuff it," he snapped, but he chuckled to himself. He should have known better than to curse within her earshot; even the word crap didn't sit well with her.  
    "You finally get those cogs fixed?" Connor asked, scratching Wolf's belly as Sphere rolled around the floor, vying for attention.  
    "Sort of. I'll probably have Robin take a look at it when he gets back." Wally pushed his goggles up onto his head and headed inside. He was covered in grease and oil, but it was nothing a bit of washing and a good bath couldn't fix. His waistcoat was ruined, though. He left it in his toolbox with his goggles and headed inside.  
    In the middle of the corridor, he ran, quite literally, into Robin. He was filthy- that was odd, especially for him. His hat, usually perched perfectly upright on his head, was knocked dreadfully askew and his mask was halfway off his face. His coat was undone. He must have just gotten back. Most alarming, however, was not one of the aforementioned abnormalities, but the still-smoking pistol dangling from his hand.  
    "Well hi there," Wally chuckled, a hint of worry in his voice. "You run into a street gang or something? You look like crap."  
    Robin righted his hat and cracked a bit of a smile. "Something like that. I see you fixed your bike," he laughed.  
    "Something like that." The smell of baking cookies began to morph into smoke quickly. Robin raised an eyebrow.  
    "M'gann's baking?"  
    "Uh-huh."  
    "She's getting better. She hasn't burned a batch in..." he checked his pocket watch. "Thirty hours at least." He laughed. "Honestly, I'm surprised at how fast she figured out the oven. It only took her-"  
    "Two months?" Wally suggested. "Anyways, I'm gonna go wash the grease off of myself. You could probably take a bath too, Lord Secret Missionham."  
    "In a minute. First I'm gonna go make sure you didn't accidentally rig the bike to blow up when you light the firebox."  
     "That was one time!" Wally rolled his eyes and punched his friend on the arm. "I had no way of knowing that was gunpowder."  
     "Riiiiight."  
    "I'm gonna go now, if you're finished needlessly mocking me."  
    "Good idea, you slimeball. The smell is... whelming, to say the least," Robin chuckled. "See you in a bit."  
    Wally shook his head as he continued down the corridor, the pressure plates under the floors lighting the kerosene in the lamps on the walls. Once in his room, he switched on the faucet and checked the telegraph box, which turned put to be empty.  
    He worried about Robin sometimes. Being a vigilante hero was rough, and starting out at 9 years old couldn't be good for you. Then again, maybe being used to it made it easier somehow. But even then, being a hero inevitably means failing, and the Batman was only the barest example of a father figure. Robin wasn't the most dramatic of people, but even the Boy Wonder had some issues that needed talking about.  
     The washtub was overflowing. He could wax poetic about his friend's emotional turmoil later. Right now, he had to worry about getting the grease out of his shirt before his aunt, Iris, murdered him. 


	2. In Which Zatanna and Artemis Return; Snickerdoodles Are Decimated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Boy Wonder does some introspection, there is sads and moderate angst; Slight romance ensues.

    Robin's pistol was still smoking, even after his friend was launched into his stomach at warp speed. He resolved to have it looked at and holstered it, not wanting to see the worry Wally had exhibited on anyone else's face. He was glad he'd opted to wear his black coat today. There was still blood on his coat, he was certain, and Wally was worried enough for his well-being already.

    Not, he reminded himself, that there was anything for Wally to worry about. These endeavours were simple recon missions- investigations into a shifty steamworks company that he suspected was selling shoddily-made automatons that exploded when their fireboxes were lit or, for the simpler clockwork ones, when their springs were wound. The... complication, as it were, came when the "security" outside the factory attempted to apprehend the surveillor. Robin was not a murderer, but if someone tried to kill him, well then by God, he was going to try to kill them right back.

    These were dark thoughts for a fourteen-year-old to be having. On some level, Robin knew that, but he had been living this life since he was nine. He was accustomed to a certain level of darkness from a young age, though he wasn't one to dwell on such things.

    As he had said to Artemis a few months ago, he would either get traught, or get dead. She didn't know that was the Boy Wonder's mantra, didn't know that was what he said to himself in the mirror while suiting up for a mission or combing his hair in the morning, didn't know it was the only reason he was still alive. As he gingerly placed his bloody gloves in the sink to soak, he repeated it to himself.

    "Get traught, Robin, or get dead."

   And with that, the Boy Wonder shoved all thoughts of darkness, anger, and stress to the back of his mind to be dealt with later. He had other matters to attend to, and given the smell wafting down the hall, those matters would be out of the oven in minutes. There was nothing in the world, he decided, a cookie and a friend couldn't fix.

    For her lack of timekeeping skills, M'gann could make a mean snickerdoodle. Apparently Wolf agreed, as his head was currently buried in the garbage bin laden with rejected baked goods.

    "I see Wolf's a fan," the Martian laughed, "even of the burnt ones!"  
 

    She'd been baking non-stop since she arrived in her uncle's aethership, having finally found the "proper facilities," as she called the modest kitchen under Mount Justice, for baking the snickerdoodle recipe a certain character on her favourite radio programme used. Her learning curve came... slowly, to say the least, when it came to baking, as Martians did not have ovens. However, once she figured out how the oven worked, she burned fewer and fewer batches of cookies, and had stopped starting actual fires almost altogether. Robin was enjoying the fruits of that gradual process now, and he had to say it was very much worth the countless repairs to the oven.  
 

   "Do I smell cookies?" asked a voice from the kitchen doorway.  
 

  "Artemis!" M'gann flew at the blonde archer in a flurry of petticoats and hugged her tight. "You're back!"  
 

   Artemis chuckled. "Zatanna's here, too, you know."  
    "You called?" Zatanna waved from behind Artemis. "Are those cookies I smell?"  
    Artemis and Zatanna had gone out for a bit to go and see Zatanna's father when they got a telegraph saying Doctor Fate had temporarily released his hold on the man, who had taken ill the week prior.  
 

   Once they'd got out of the doorway, Zatanna and Artemis all took a seat at the table whilst M'gann passed around the plate of snickerdoodles one more time. Wally, as it happened, was now finished changing clothes and, as the plate came back to M'gann, swiped the rest of them and finished them in seconds. Naturally, he sat next to Artemis.

  
    Robin turned to Zatanna. "How's your dad?"

  
    "He's okay. They thought it was scarlet fever at first, but it was just the flu. He was a lot better when we left." She smiled, a little sadly. "Fate will take over again once the fever goes away."  

"It's good that you got to see him as himself, though," Robin said, trying to be comforting. He wasn't very good at feelings, especially dealing with others'. It seemed to work, though, because Zatanna cracked a smile and placed her hand over his own.

   "Yeah."

   Across the table, Wally was stuffing his face again, and Artemis was in stitches. Zatanna laughed, and even Conner gave a good chuckle. Wally was a valuable asset to the team, but his table manners were absolutely atrocious.

    It was amazing, Robin thought, how the team had gone through so much, and yet they all got by just fine for the most part. They'd learned to live with it. And he wasn't quite sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing yet, but for now at least, it felt like the former. And that was all you needed, really.  _There's nothing in the world a cookie and a friend can't fix._  
  
  
  
        

 


	3. In Which Lying by Omission Is Still Kind Of Lying

Zatanna hated lying. This was mostly owing to the fact that she didn’t often have to, because she usually could use magic to fix things when they didn’t go her way, or when she messed things up. Lying to people, especially ones she cared about, turned her stomach, but she swallowed her nausea with a glass of milk and a snickerdoodle. It was true that they had visited her father, yes. But they had carefully neglected to mention the other reason they took the train out of Happy Harbor: Artemis’s father was planning a heist. 

Zatanna hadn’t been told, of course, that it was Artemis’s father. All Artemis had said was she knew of a plot to steal a diamond, and Zatanna had agreed that stopping the heist was worth a brief interruption in their leisure time (if seeing one’s sick father can truly be called leisure time at all). It was only when, on their third night of keeping watch at the museum, they had chased off Sportsmaster and his cronies and come back to the hotel they were staying in to find a note attached to the door that Artemis had explained herself.

Zatanna had definitely been shocked. Who wouldn’t be? But she had agreed not to tell the rest of the team what had happened, or about Artemis’s father. If she wanted to keep it secret, Zatanna trusted her enough to let her. 

She was glad to be home, though. Robin looked happy enough to see her, although she did sense something was off with him. But she had learned that pressing such issues with him was at best unproductive, and at worst, the cause of a shouting match, so she resolved to wait a while to ask him. 

Meanwhile, she laughed with the rest of them at Wally’s egregious manners with the rest of the team until all the snickerdoodles were gone. Taking a look around the kitchen, though, she noticed someone was missing.

“Where’s Kaldur?” she asked.

“He’s out swimming,” M’gann replied, cleaning up after her snickerdoodles. “I offered him some cookies before you guys got here, but he said he wasn’t hungry. I still saved him a few, though.”

“Okay.” At least he wasn’t missing. After the past week, Zatanna didn’t think she could handle anymore chaos. She just sort of wanted to sit down with her friends and her boyfriend for a few hours and recover. She rested her head on Robin’s, which was a bit of a feat when one considered he was a head shorter than her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long since I've updated, guys. I've been pretty busy for the past bit. Hope you enjoy the new chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> So, how was it? Thanks for reading, will try to update this and my other ones more often. :)


End file.
